Not to be confused with science.
{ I did my own peer review of this article and give it 10/10. ~drummyfish }
Soyence (also spelled soyience) is business, propaganda and politics trying to pass as science, nowadays typically connected to pseudoleftism (hence the word soy), pseudoskepticism, capitalism and corporations. It is what in the 21st century has taken on the role that's historically been played by the church: that of establishing and maintaining orthodoxy for the control of mass population -- this time it is so called "science" or "rationality" that's used as the tool instead of God and religion, however the results are the same -- this is sometimes called the cult of science (quite nicely summed up e.g. here). Soyence is not about listening to what science says, it is about listetning to what "reputable scientists" say, and of course not questioning them; soyence is what the typical reddit atheist or tiktok feminist believes science is or what Neil De Grass Tyson tells you science is. While science is about collecting facts and drawing conclusions, soyence is about setting conclusions and finding or fabricating facts that support them. One red flag to watch out in relation to soyence is a great weight put on reputation -- in true science reputation plays no role, only results do; reputation and its great value for one's acceptance is rather part of politics (and maybe show business). Notice for example how in the past it was more common to hear "science has found X" (as in "logic itself shows this fact") rather than "scientists have found X", which is more common nowadays -- mentally we have shifted to separate people to "scientists", those who "know" and dictate what's true, and non-scientists, those who don't know and must just listen. Soyence calls itself the one and only science^TM and gatekeeps the term by calling unpopular science (such as that regarding human race, questioning official versions of historical events or safety of big pharma vaccines) "pseudoscience" and "conspiracy theories". Soyence itself is pseudoscience but it has an official status, approval of state, strong connection to politics, it is mainstream, popular, controlled by those in power, censored ("moderated") and intentionally misleading. Soyence can be encountered in much of academia, on Wikipedia and in other popular/mainstream media such as TV "documentaries" and YouTube. A soyence supporter wrongfully believes that reason wouldn't allow such a large scale mass population manipulation (despite this happening over and over throughout history) -- people at large aren't reasonable and reason cannot beat propaganda; only the highest naivety could make you believe that politics will follow science -- it's the other way around, and always has been. With enough power anything is possible. Big science is a big dirty game just like big politics or big corporate business, anyone thinking that corruption avoids big science or that it's only present in small amounts is naive like an unborn child, it is literally like believing big politics is free of corruption and done by good selfless people who are concerned about securing well being for the citizens.
"I don’t care about individual scientists, only a consensus of scientists. [...] I don't care, titles don't matter, what matters is consensus." --Neil de Grass on Del Bigtree's TV show
Compared to good old fun pseudosciences such as astrology and flat Earth, soyence is extra sneaky by purposefully trying to blend in with real science, i.e. within a certain truly scientific field, such as biology, there is a soyentific cancer mixed in by activists, corporations and state, that may be hard to separate for common folk and many times even for pros. This is extremely harmful as in the eyes of retarded people (basically everyone) the neighboring legit science gives credibility to propaganda bullshit. There is a tendency to think we somehow magically live in a time that's fundamentally different from other times in history in which it is now a pretty clear and uncontroversial fact that the name of science was abused hard by propaganda, almost everyone easily accepts that historically politically constructed lies were presented as confirmed by science, but somehow people refuse to believe it could be the case nowadays. In times of Nazism there was no doubt about race being a completely scientific term and that Jews were scientifically confirmed to be the inferior race -- nowadays in times when anti Nazis have won and politics is based on denying existence of race somehow scientists start to magically find evidence that no such thing as race has ever existed -- how convenient! And just in case you wanted to check if it's actually true, you'll be labeled a racist and you won't find job ever again.
Soyence uses all the cheap tricks of politics (also not dissimilar to those of greenwashing, openwashing etc.) to win stupid people, it builds on the cult of bullying religion and creating a war mentality, overuse of twisted "rationality" (pseudoskepticism), creating science bloat and bullshit "scientific" fields to obscure lies, punishment of the correct use of rationality, building cults of personality ("science educators", the gatekeepers of "science") and appealing to egoism and naivity of wannabe smartasses while at the same time not even holding up to principles of science such as genuine objectivity. A soyence kid will for example keep preaching about how everything should be proven by reproducible experiments while at the same time accepting de facto irreproducible results, e.g. those obtained with billion dollar worth research performed at CERN which can NOT be reproduced anywhere else than at CERN with thousands of top scientist putting in years of work. Such results are not reproducible in practice, they are accepted on the basis of pure faith in those presenting it, just as religious people accept the words of preachers. The kid will argue that in theory someone else can build another CERN and reproduce the results, but that won't happen in practice, it's just a purely theoretical unrealistic scenario so his version of what "science" is is really based on reproducibility that only works in a dreamed up world, this kind of reproducibility doesn't at all fulfill its original purpose of allowing others to check, confirm or refute the results of experiments. This starts to play a bigger role when for example vaccines start to get promoted by the government as "proven safe by science" (read "claimed safe by a corporation who makes money off of people being sick"), the soyence kid will gladly accept the vaccine and fight for their acceptance just thanks to this label, not based on any truly scientific facts but out of pure faith in self proclaimed science authorities -- trusting an authority (be it pope, priests, holy book or a scientific journal) is by definition religion and here the soyentist is relying purely on faith, a concept he would like to think he hates with his soul.
The "citation needed" craziness that indicates lack of any brain and pure reliance on the word of authority is seen e.g. on Wikipedia. Wikipedia doesn't accept original research, observation or EVEN LOGIC ITSELF as a basis for presenting something -- everything, even trivial claims have to have a "citation" from a source WITH mainstream political views (unpopular and controversial sources are banned); Wikipedia is therefore one big propaganda ground for those with power over the mainstream media.
Soyence relies on low IQ, shallow education and popular "science education" (e.g. neil de grass), while making its followers believe they are smart. It produces propaganda material such as "documentaries" with Morgan Freeman (i.e. people who are good at persuasion rather than being competent), series like The Big Bang Theory and YouTube videos with titles such as "Debunking Flat Earth with FACTS AND LOGIC", so there's a huge mass of NPCs thinking they are Einsteins who blindly support this cult. Soyence attacks science from within by attacking its core principles, i.e. it tries to ridicule and punish thinking outside the box and asking specific questions -- in this it is not dissimilar to a mass religion.
For the ones who possibly still don't get it, here is a little comparison. It is good if for now you don't see it as "good" vs "evil" (this is a separate step, left for later on), just as a comparison of what science is vs what's politics. The first step is simply to see the difference.
Of course, once science advances, it may stop being so simple as for everyone to be able to for example check the results that scientists found, that's without doubt, the point is simply that at the stage when the field starts being a religion, for whatever reason at all, we can no longer call it science, it is simply religion that evolved from science. That is all.
Basically with science we can utilize freedom distance to measure "how much of a science" something is -- here we may define freedom distance as the average distance to someone who can completely grasp the presented "science" with ALL that's required, including understanding the results, verifying the himself and so on. If this distance is within a small village, we can consider it science; if it's several countries, it is not science anymore.
Soyence popularizators also like to contaminate science with emotion, with "stories" and heroes and other kind of bullshit that has no place in true science: true science is pure rationality, it aims for highest objectivity possible and to that emotion is an obstacle. Science is a cold, emotionless tool -- if you don't see beauty in this fact alone, science is not for you.
Some further examples of soyence:
Here are a few tips on how to spot soyence:
The cult of soyence is one of the great pillars of the system's indoctrination and brainwashing system that nurtures NPCs into a mindset of mindlessness in which people obtain answers to any and all questions solely from "approved experts", allowing to establish lies which contradict what would otherwise be completely obvious, visible with the naked eye. Of course it's not necessarily wrong to take the word of an expert, nonetheless the point here is that this simple idea is twisted and taken to such an extreme that it becomes a tool for exploitation of the people: now it is FORBIDDEN to NOT take the word of an "expert" on practically every part of your life that is not the one tiny and insignificant niche that you specialize in such as selling cars or photographing weddings (and even there if you oppose the consensus you'll likely be canceled and labeled "no longer an expert in that area"): there are now eye experts that will tell you what your eyes are seeing and ear experts telling you what your ears are hearing and unless you have a PhD in eye or ear "science", you must trust them. So now a common folk is completely rid of all thinking, it is possible to implant any "facts" to everyone's heads. For example (this may happen to the author sooner or later) it is absolutely possible for the system to imprison an absolute pacifist -- who only ever advocated against any violence at all -- for the crime of inciting violence, even if there is complete and undeniable evidence, such as his website with all his writings, that the man never called for violence and in fact did the absolute opposite -- this is possible because no one will bother reading the evidence even when it's right in front of his eyes, or he just won't believe his eyes because he is simply waiting for an "expert" to translate the real world for him, and if said expert is skilled enough in mental gymnastic -- or just plain and simple lying -- he can just translate a sentence "NEVER use violence" into it "actually" meaning "I call everyone to use violence now!". This sounds stupids and it is, and it's how reality is nowadays -- just ask yourself this: when you see a mass shooter on the news, will you go download his manifesto, read through it and make your own judgment, or will you just wait for the summary of the manifesto they'll give you on the news?
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